In what has become the silent standard each year, the Pittsburgh Steelers finished with a barely winning record and couldn’t squeeze their way into the playoffs. After starting the season at 2-6, head coach Mike Tomlin guided his team to a 9-8 record and secured the 17th overall pick in the upcoming 2023 NFL draft. Although some organizations may settle for such a scenario, for Pittsburgh this could have been, and probably was, predicted back in August. For a franchise that prides itself on winning division championships, deep playoff runs and Super Bowl wins, another season with nine wins and no playoff wins just feels empty.
Photo Credit: Jordan Schofield/SteelerNation (JSKO_PHOTO Twitter) / Steelers head coach, Mike Tomlin stands and stares into the distance on the field at Acrisure Stadium prior to a 2022 preseason game. |
As the locker room sits cleared out for the offseason cleaning and organizational matters are being attended to, it seems as though we saw an abrupt ending for the Steelers. In what could simply be described as, “too little too late," it appeared as though the team was just finding its stride in time for the season finale against the Cleveland Browns. But as we’ve heard the post-season proclamations from Tomlin and the coaching staff, there is a sense of contentment with the results of the 2022 season and another season without a playoff victory. Steelers’ owner, Art Rooney II, shared those similar sentiments on Thursday as he began his annual press conference to close the chapter on the season.
“I’ll just start by saying that even though we fell short of making the playoffs this year, I thought the second half of the season was encouraging. Obviously, we still have a lot of areas we need to improve on. But, I like the way the team kept fighting down the stretch and kept ourselves alive.”
Rooney stated the obvious in saying the season was a tale of two halves. We saw a pair of new quarterbacks featuring Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett trying to find their stride against the league's best teams early in the season. This led to a plethora of widely-known offensive woes and resulted in close losses that would ultimately decide the team's fate come January. But with that said, Rooney lumped the team together in the failed first half of the season, including his largest investment of the entire franchise; the defense.
“I think you want to see a team improve over the course of the season from start to finish no matter what your record is. That’s what you’re shooting for, is to get better as the season goes on. And I thought we did that,” Rooney said. “Obviously, you’d like to not dig yourself too deep of a hole in the beginning of the season, which unfortunately we did, but the fact we were breaking in new quarterbacks, two of them in fact, was something that I think was a factor in at least some of the difficulties we had in the first half of the season.”
Rooney continued to voice his frustrations with his NFL-leading $133.942 million defense.
“We weren’t playing that well on the defensive side in the first half of the season either. Giving up big plays early in games doesn’t help, so I don’t discount completely the first half of the season, you can’t ignore it, but I think again the key is see that improvement through the course of the whole season is encouraging.”
Photo Credit: Jordan Schofield/SteelerNation (JSKO_PHOTO Twitter)
While I am not going to praise defensive coordinator Tyrel Austin and the Steelers’ defense for the first half of the season, I’d argue the group was the largest contributor in that losing span. Before the bye week, the Steelers were 2-3 in games that were decided by one score. To put that another way, if that was flipped, the Steelers would have been in the playoffs. To take that one step further, the basic numbers speak for themselves. If we take away the arguably two worst games of the season being against the perennial respective division champions in the Buffalo Bills and the Philadelphia Eagles, the Steelers were outscored to the tune of 124 to 104. Per game, the Steelers’ offense averaged just over 17 points, which ranked almost last in the entire league. It is hard to win games in today's NFL with only 17 points.
The defense meanwhile, averaged an allowance of roughly 20 points per game, which was in the top ten of the league. In that same stretch, the offense turned the ball over ten times, while the defense forced eight turnovers. The absence of TJ Watt was critical in those games and was very much felt at every level, but Watt doesn't play on offense. With that said, it is basic logic to recognize that if the offense turns the ball over more than the defense causes them, or simply stating a negative turnover differential is detrimental to a team’s success, is football common sense.
Jordan Schofield / SteelerNation (Twitter JSKO_PHOTO)
Therefore, Rooney tacking the early 2-6 record on the group he made history paying less than a year ago doesn’t necessarily add up. It sounded like a parent disciplining one child because another misbehaved. Or, just repeating the Steelers' old-fashioned way of business and not dragging internal accountability into the public for sake of avoiding conflict.
The NFL has changed drastically since the Steelers were born in 1933. Even if we look at the league in the last couple of decades, the formula to win began by having a strong rushing attack paired with a mediocre quarterback. Since then, it has transformed into possessing a high-octane passing attack and being able to average over 25 points per game. The ‘Steelers Way’ doesn’t align with the current NFL. One could even say the Steelers’ way of doing things is now outdated and they are too stubborn to adapt.
It is one of those, “it worked 50 years ago, so it should work today” stalemates. The league has shifted to teams going all-in in constructing an elite team out of a high-spending free agency shopping spree, winning a championship, fizzling out and repeating the process. A couple of examples of that could be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Los Angeles Rams. Rooney doesn’t agree with that logic.
“I think that the way we’ve done it, we give ourselves a chance to be competitive every year, and that means you have a chance to get into the tournament and have a chance to win it. So, I’m not saying that we wouldn’t work hard if we take some chances, if we thought we had something that we could really build on. But, I don’t see anything changing dramatically in that regard.”
Photo Credit: Jordan Schofield/SteelerNation (JSKO_PHOTO Twitter)
The Steelers are arguably one of the most successful franchises in sports. If we look at the three head coaches in 52 years, eight Super Bowl appearances, six championships and 24 division championships all in that timeframe, there is obviously something to be said for that. But hidden in these years is the constant paradigm of “win now or win later."
More recently since Super Bowl XLV, the Steelers have seemingly been lost in this and it is evident in the multiple winning seasons, yet a 3-7 record in the playoffs. This may boil down to the fact that the Steelers simply don’t know what to do and have just been sweeping this question under the rug. As Rooney explained, they are sticking with the “it’s worked so far, why change it?” mentality. It is just a matter of time before the Steelers are forced to change to keep up with the league.
How do you think the defense did at the beginning of the season? Do you think the “Steelers Way” still works? Let us know in the comments below!
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